Some of the tasks that a user performs online involve researching and comparing various items that they find on the web using their web browser. For example, a user may be looking for a new apartment in a particular area of Seattle. Over the course of their research, they may visit four or five different real estate sites and find one or two apartments on each site that are of particular interest to them. Typically, to compare the various apartments, the user may have to physically print a copy and paste multiple apartment listings into a document or spreadsheet. Needless to say, this is a very manual process.
Alternately, the user may opt to save each apartment page in a favorites list. This list is typically displayed in a control that is off to the side of the browser window. Here, however, when the user wishes to review their selections, the user is still faced with the onerous task of manually accessing each link and reviewing, in a generally serial fashion, the various apartments associated with the various links.